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June 3, 2005
A New Yorker in London
Last night during the interval at Covent Garden my friend Lynette remarked that London must be familiar to me by now. I smiled and she added, “So what still seems strange?”
London is a horizontal city, New York is vertical. The buildings are London are low and take up full blocks.
Nothing makes your own class system more obvious to you than seeing someone else’s. I’m so used to how class is structured in New York that it’s almost invisible to me. Nothing throws it in relief more soberly than switching the cues. I don’t know if this is true, but class feels more race-based at home, probably because there’s an extra social layer on top of race in London, and there’s also a white underclass here, something that in NYC seems to be largely minority. Accents mean a lot here, I’m only beginning to distinguish them by class.
Far more trivial things: Shower fixtures. There are too many damn knobs in London. It’s not as bad as Buenos Aires, though, where the shower stall at the BelAir also had some sort of needle spa shower heads randomly placed to attack my eye with a stinging jet of hot water if I turned the handle incorrectly. It took three days to figure that out.
The London tube is cleaner than the subway, but it’s also more claustrophobic as the cars are more cramped with lower ceilings. Also, take your pick – the London stations are cooler but the cars themselves are hotter and in New York it’s the reverse.
Posted by Leigh Witchel at June 3, 2005 6:22 AM
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